ZFS/ESXi Network Setup Q's

Churnd

n00b
Joined
Feb 3, 2005
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54
Having an all-in-one setup is nice, but my brain keeps getting stuck in a loop trying to figure out the networking part.

My box has 6 NICS (+1 for IPMI but we won't count it). 2 nics are onboard & the other 4 are from an Intel card. I have NexentaStor set up in a VM providing NFS storage to ESXi. ESXi is installed on a 30GB SSD & I have NexentaStor's boot volume running off of another 30GB SSD which was added as a datastore to ESXi. This is working well so far.

What I'd like to do is have a private network between NexentaStor & ESXi for the NFS storage traffic. Do I actually need to use a NIC port for that, including cables & a switch, or can I just set that up logically between ESXi? I do have an 8 port managed switch that I plan to use for this box as well, so should I set up a private vlan for that traffic... say two trunked NICS? How is that best set up in ESXi? I thought it'd be a VMKernel network, but I need to be able to connect to it on the primary network for management.
 
do not complicate things with 6 nics

My way is to use a physical switch that can manage vlans. Define your vlan ports there like san, lan, wan.
Use one tagged port with all vlans and connect this port to your all-in-one box with ESXi.

Now you can define virtual nics on your VM's and connect them to the desired vlan.
If you have a little money over, you may use a 10 Gbit link from ESXi to your physical
switch to have not only fast inter-connects but als a fast connect to your switch to
your workstations, other all-in-ones or backup systems
(i use quite affordable hp procurve 2910's with 4 x 10 GBe Ports as uplink, 1 Gbit port trunking is
not really worth the effort)

Gea
 
No, just create a virtual switch with no backing nic.

How does that work? Just create an empty switch and assign some manual IP like 192.168.1.1? Do you have to actually assign a NIC? What port properties do I need to set?
 
No, that's the point. You don't assign any physical NIC to the vswitch. Yes, give it some IP in a different admin subnet you invent. I don't think you need any special properties in the normal case.
 
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